With the success of Cobra Kai, YouTube Red is on a roll right now and we have an exclusive track from the soundtrack of their new show Impulse, which premieres today. Impulse is a high-concept show about a teenager with the ability to teleport, and the fallout of the consequences from what she does. If this sounds familiar, it’s based on a book by Steven Gould that is part of the "Jumper" series, the first book of which had a big-screen adaptation in 2008 with Jumper, starring Hayden Christensen and Jamie Bell and directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity).
That adaptation didn’t do so well, so Liman is back as executive producer shepherding this new version with a female lead: Maddie Hasson’s "Henry". Musically, the show has picked up American composer and sound designer Benjamin Wynn to create the score. For his electronic projects, Wynn goes under the name "Deru", and has kept the moniker for Impulse. We’ve been given the track ‘Held At Gunpoint’ and it’s an intriguing piece of score, very much in the Cliff Martinez vein that is particularly in vogue at this time.
We asked Deru for his thoughts on creating Impulse‘s score, and you can read what he told us below while checking out his own sub-brand of "dark electro-acoustic" that we’ve provided.
"The inspiration for the score started with the Cristal Baschet, which is an instrument invented by the Baschet brothers in France in the 50s. It sounds incredible, and I’ve been interested in them for years, but they’re quite hard to come by.
"I learned about Lenka Moravkova, a Czech player that happened to be traveling through LA. She has a beautiful sounding instrument and she allowed me to play it for a while the first time we met. That night I came up with the main theme for the show, which I then took home and extended into a few pieces that she later played for a recording session a few weeks later. That became Henry’s theme for when she teleports.
"The instrument worked it’s way into the show in more subtle ways as well. I recorded the sound of drum sticks tapping on the resonators, and then sent synths through the impulse responses to make it sound as if the synths were coming out of the instrument.
"The Cristal Baschet really became the sound world with which I composed the other music around. I love the control over sound that electronic music provides, and I also love the sound of acoustic instruments and human players. So hybrid electro-acoustic scores are what I most like to compose. It’s the best of both worlds for me.
"I enjoy blurring the lines between acoustic and electronic."
Impulse is out now on YouTube Red
